Currently, there are few ways to tune the conductivity of carbon fiber. Most of the methods involve high temperature heat treatments and chemical modification of the core of the carbon fiber, which may result in a large degree mechanical degradation of the carbon fiber and may change the conductivity by about a factor of two or less.
Further, for oxidation resistance, carbon fiber may be coated with silica or another ceramic. This is needed, in some applications, to incorporate carbon fiber into ceramic or metal matrices to form high strength composites. Some processes for coating carbon fiber with a ceramic involve expensive precursors that result in a factor of about 100 increase in the price of the processed fiber. Also, some of the ceramic coatings are epitaxial and of a very different lattice structure than the underlying carbon fiber.